His real name was Wendell. But he was dubbed the Weasel the first time I met that odd, short man with the Dutch-boy haircut, his dyed-black bangs cut straight across his flat forehead. The Weasel had an extremely small head, three-quarter-size, and the tiny hands of a ten-year-old, except they were hairy. Indeed, the Weasel was an immensely hairy creature, with bug eyes and a faint ring of white foam around his perpetually chapped, cracked lips. His teeth had a tinge of black—due, or so the story went, to an excess of medicines he had to take as a baby. Rumors about the Weasel were rampant. Some claimed he had a thick, long scar that traversed his chest from a radical open-heart surgery performed on him when he was a boy. His bluish skin tint was explained by a lack of circulation. In fact, Martha Stewart Mom and Mom Who Knows More About You Than You Do had told me the Weasel had a condition that at any moment could claim his life. They competed to explain: “That’s why he has all that energy! That’s why he’s so joyous!”

I remarked with sarcasm too subtle for some, “Oh, I agree. When I see him, I’m reminded of life’s beauty! And suddenly, I don’t feel I deserve to complain!”

Surely, though, there was a cost. Perhaps my secret world of nicknames and character reduction kept me at arm’s length from the others. Maybe I appeared more the observer and less the partaker. I felt ostracized. No, not by the nannies. I knew they liked me, and lately, I’d made inroads with the au pairs. But to the mothers and the handful of other fathers, I was not to be trusted.

Of course, I didn’t tell this to Kate. Why worry her? And yet it was hard to watch the Weasel charm the other mothers each afternoon on the playground. Even a small gesture, like Dad Without a Clue offering a stick of Juicy Fruit and a Wet ’n Wipe to Casual Mom, threatened me. So I clung to that hard lesson of life that history teaches: It’s all cyclical, really. One day the Weasel will reveal his true nature and fall out of favor. Dad Without a Clue will flake out and forget to pick up his kid. And maybe one day I will be the Dad with All the Answers.

Still, I’d begun to doubt myself. Then one morning—wah-lah—a minor miracle occurred. It happened the same morning I’d dropped off a note from Kate to this Anna Brody person. The note was simple, sweet, saying basically, Welcome to the neighborhood. Kate had asked me to hand-deliver it to the Ashworth-Brody house. House was an understatement. It was easy to find, what with all the workers—the painters, the plasterers, the plumbers, the men on the scaffolding, the roofers; most of Brooklyn seemed to be hard at work transforming the building, which up until the previous March had been divided into eight apartments, back into the newly restored circa-1848 Pierrepont Mansion.